Have you, too, heard Jon Stewart and every other hand-wringer complaining about how the media "ignores" Ron Paul, the politician who's been covered extensively for four or five years despite being a cranky old man representing a narrow ideological strand of libertarian thought?

Ron Paul came in second in last weekend's Iowa straw poll, finishing less than 200 votes…
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Well, folks should stop worrying about their sad unnoticed new special friend Ron, because he's nearly tied with President Obama in a hypothetical presidential matchup.

A new Gallup poll finds Paul trailing Obama 47-45 among registered voters and 45-44 among national adults. This puts him roughly in line with "top-tier" candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Michele Bachmann.

It's very doubtful that Paul would do as well after a long general election campaign. But guess what? If you poll at 45% against the President of the United States, ever — meaning, you have solid name recognition and a touch of credibility — and your radical ideology has rubbed off on your fellow candidates as the campaign's gone on, and your son, Rand, has become a nationally popular new United States Senator thanks to you, then maybe we can stop worrying about how "ignored" he is on a dumb weekend cable news segment or two? Really: He'll survive. He's surviving as we speak!

And that's because he's gotten and continues to get plenty of attention.